Nice Weather!

 Since winter is now over... And he refused to wear his boots.  It is now time to wear them!  Now I can't get him to wear his tennis shoes.  (Puppy rides with us to daycare in the mornings and we give him kisses before we go in; then he rides to work with mommy)

We trimmed bushes and this guy thought his shovel also helped trim the bushes.

Selfie?

Rest of the Weekend

Since let's just say January, Parker has asked when we are getting the camper from Uncle Kelley's at least once a week.  Monday morning we finally went to get it!  He was soo excited!  Unfortunately he thought we were going to get it and go camping right from there.  So we settled on eating lunch in the camper... Does that count?  To our little 3 (almost) year old it was a win.  But now the question of when we are going camping is about every 1/2 hour... and immediately when waking in the morning.  We need to get this little guy out camping!

On Saturday night Kris had a bachelor party for my soon to be brother-in-law.  My dad and brother went so my mom drove them home after.  Carter came to play with us.  Parker was so excited to play with him and was showing off.  It was pretty funny.  He was so chatty with him too.  When he woke up and Carter wasn't there to play with he wasn't too happy!  He raced down the stairs looking for him :(

Our friend Joe is a veteran so we invited them over for supper on Monday night.  They brought these gorgeous flowers for me.  They smell amazing too!

Our Little Helper

Parker is doing pretty good so far with the "rental house".  He likes taking his mower over there and "working".  We didn't have him there while we were demoing or running the power tools.  He was at daycare on Friday and Sunday he spent the day with Aunt Dani and Armor.  While he's there tools tend to disappear and others are offered to you in place of what you need.  On Friday night after I had picked him up from Daycare he was starting to wear pretty thin.  We had plywood set up on sawhorses as our work area and it was at the perfect height; he just kept running into it.  Got himself three times around his eyes.

We don't really have a routine yet but we've spent every night over there so supper tends to be a little different than normal.  As far as I'm concerned its better to have a picnic in the driveway then eat anything in the house until we get some work done.  We've been heading home just in time for him to go to bed.  We will probably take a night off to relax at home each week.

In the pictures it looks like he has nice clothes on.  We have since learned our lesson.  He toasted this outfit.  He fell in the garage after supper and had mud/grime from his heels to his neck.

Week 1

One week in and going strong! :)

The back mudroom only had storm windows (that went all around 3 sides) but had no insulation or heat ran to it.  There was water damage from just having storm windows in.  So we decided to tackle windows!  The Habitat for Humanity Restore had these windows that we thought would fit perfectly (they didn't; we had our measurement flip flopped) but we made fit!  We had to lower our wall a few inches to make them fit and had some trial and error.  But we are pretty proud of them.  Our friend Joe helped put the windows in with us (also no experience).  While we were at the store a guy walking by had to tell us how you drill them into the walls and walked away shaking his head like "they are in for it; good luck".  haha.

So on Friday with Joe's help we got the two windows in facing the backyard.  Once we had them in I convinced Kris we wanted another one facing the driveway.  So Sunday morning we put that one in.  I had to keep Kris motivated after my brother-in-law's bachelor party that took place on Saturday night but after Joe took off I convinced him to tackle the 3rd wall.  We went ahead and just put studs in to make it a solid wall.  Definitely more work to do.  The interior needs a little more demo work before we can insulate and add drywall. And we need to figure out how to trim out the exterior part of the window and fill in siding.

The pictures look like the paint job is really bad but there had been plastic stapled from the top of the peak down below the storm windows (a few were broken).  So we think that extra moisture in there causing all the paint to chip up; the rest of the house isn't peeling like that.

Welcome to our Newest Project

 As you may have heard on here (and from me in person) it was a long winter!  My husband bugged me all winter looking for a "shop" or new house with said "shop" with it. I'm not interested in moving.  Our house is plenty big and it works for us.  It was meant to be a long term thing.

So he started breaking me down.  Wearing me thin.  We started compromising.  I wasn't going to buy land, then pay to put a shop on it while there is no one living there (you are a sitting duck, waiting for people to steal your stuff).  I found this house back in early March (with a 30x40 shop) with the intent to fix up and rent out.  It was a foreclosure with Fannie Mae.  And man did we have some battles just trying to get this house bought.  WELL we FINALLY closed on Monday.

The house is a small 1000/sf one bedroom ranch home.  It has a mudroom off the back, leading to a laundry room, into the kitchen.  There is one bedroom and a sunroom off of the front.  Everything in the house needs touched; we have some significant work to do.  The shed needs to be completely redone.  The previous owner built it in 2009 (added vinyl siding) but never put on shingles!  There is significant water damage in the shop.

On Monday when we closed we were overwhelmed.  Not knowing where to even start!  It was an ordeal just getting all utilities back on.  I had no idea where to start so I started cleaning windows!! The least important item! :)  We're going to work through things with purpose so we end up with a nice product, take our time to make it right.

When the water got turned on the kitchen sink was leaking (with no shut off under the sink), water heater release valve didn't work and the toilet wouldn't fill (just full on water running).  So we had them shut it back off to fix those items.  Kris also had to fix something down in the pit that the water company said wasn't their responsibility.  BUT we now have water.  And electric and gas.  Plus the air conditioner works!

More pictures to come.